Video: The day the laughter died

AllahpunditPosted at 10:31 pm on January 23, 2017

A palate cleanser on the state of American comedy for the three readers who managed to avoid this caterwauling abortion over the weekend. This is the second time, believe it or not, that SNL has done a completely earnest musical tribute to a Democratic politician in the last three months. The first one was terrible and embarrassing. This is worse. It’s one thing to toss aside comic irreverence to lick the shoes of your political idols, but for fark’s sake, be entertaining about it. Call in a choreographer and do a real number. This feels like two kids at a school talent show who were told that morning that they had to perform and came up with the least demanding idea they could think of. I want to believe that a skit fell through right before showtime and they were forced to scrape something together on the fly to fill the last minutes of the program — but again, this is part of a pattern. I … think they thought it was a good idea.

There’s something to be said, I guess, for popular entertainment that’s so upfront about its political biases that it’ll literally sing them. No wonder one of the show’s writers thought it’d be fine to attack Barron Trump on Twitter (something for which she was later suspended). When the bar has already been raised this high in proving your liberal virtue, what’s left except to smear the Republican president’s 10-year-old son?

The best thing that can be said about this, I think, is that comedians serenading Obama is a nice summary of the entertainment industry’s views on speaking truth to power over the last eight years. Exit quotation via Stephen “redsteeze” Miller: “The writers who came up with the ‘To Sir With Love’ skit at SNL deserve to be suspended over someone who tweets.”